In our current political discourse, right-wing politicians
continue to demonize the LGBT community in sad and desperate attempts to
rally their base. While, happily, their efforts have not been as
effective as in the past, any attempt to make gay, lesbian, bisexual, or
transgender people feel anything less than equal can lead to
devastating consequences, as the ongoing string of youth suicides so
painfully highlights.

Any preventable loss of dignity and human life must be stopped. The question is, "How?"

While
prior efforts have focused on the issue of harassment, it is time for
the LGBT community to take the dialogue one step further. When you are a
teen, simply waiting for your next birthday can seem like an eternity.
Telling our youth that life will indeed get better, some years into the
future, is not enough. We must instead create a world in which there
is no longer any shame in being gay. We must show that each and every
one of us has something of value to contribute to this world, period.

The
first step is creating discussion with the haters around where their
anti-gay beliefs come from, and challenging those beliefs with facts.
But we then need to take that dialogue even further and examine more
closely what they hope that such convictions will ultimately achieve.

Typically,
those who hold negativity toward those who are LGBT can be placed into
two main camps: those who believe that being gay is unnatural, going
against nature, or those who believe it goes against religious teaching.

With either group, the case can be made to counter such beliefs
with facts. For example, those who believe that being gay is unnatural
may be surprised to learn that homosexual activity has been observed in close to 1,500 species,
and that such scientific certitudes should be spotlighted. For those
who believe that homosexuality violates religious principles, pointing
to texts such as the Bible as justification, and dialogue around
translation issues, intent, and historical context, might be beneficial.

However, in both situations, while factual evidence might
change some minds, most will still be unwilling to let go of long-held
beliefs. My question to them then becomes, "What do you hope these
beliefs will achieve?"

The State Department today appointed the first LGBT rights foreign envoy in US history.

Randy W Berry, who is gay, has been
appointed to the senior role within the US State Department by President
Barack Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry. He has previously
served as Consul General in Amsterdam, and has also had postings for the
State Department in Bangladesh, Egypt, Uganda, South Africa, and
Washington DC. John Kerry said: “Randy’s a leader, he’s a motivator. But
most importantly for this effort, he’s got vision. Wherever he’s served
— from Nepal to New Zealand, from Uganda to Bangladesh, from Egypt to
South Africa, and most recently as consul general in Amsterdam — Randy
has excelled."

The HRC applauds:

“At a moment when many LGBT people
around the world are facing persecution and daily violence, this
unprecedented appointment shows a historic commitment to the principle
that LGBT rights are human rights,” said HRC President Chad Griffin.
“President Obama and Secretary Kerry have shown tremendous leadership in
championing the rights of LGBT people abroad. Now, working closely with
this new envoy, we’ve got to work harder than ever to create new
allies, push back on human rights violators, and support the brave
leaders and organizations that fight for LGBT rights around the world."

IGLHRC does the same:

“The appointment of Randy Berry as a
special diplomatic envoy brings to a pinnacle the historic trend, first
put in motion by the 2011 Presidential Memorandum, of integrating the
rights of LGBT people into U.S. foreign policy. Having long advocated
for this step forward, we at the International Gay and Lesbian Human
Rights Commission celebrate its arrival and congratulate Mr. Berry on
his new role. The U.S. envoy can contribute to a new era in which the
conscience of governments everywhere can be focused on the destabilizing
impact of prejudice and abuse that inflicts suffering on millions
worldwide. Human rights should be a priority for every government in
both domestic and foreign policy.

Hate groups have already denounced the creation of the position as yet
another example of the Obama administration imposing its homofascist
agenda on foreign countries.

"I’m not gay, but I’ve never talked publicly about depression before or
any of that and that was so much of what the movie was about and it was
one of the things that drew me to Alan Turing so much. I think we all
feel like weirdos for different reasons. Alan had his share of them and I
had my own and that’s what always moved me so much about his story.” -
Oscar-winning screenwriter Graham Moore, speaking to Buzzfeed.
Moore's "it gets better" acceptance speech led many (including numerous
media outlets) to wrongly assume that he is gay. At this writing
#StayWeird remains a top-trending hashtag on Twitter.

A 1988 interview with Gary Snyder, from the newly published anthology Nobody Home: Writing, Buddhism, and Living in Places

A 1988 interview with Gary Snyder, from the newly published anthology Nobody Home: Writing, Buddhism, and Living in Places

One morning in 1984, a letter posted on the other side of the world
clacked through the flap of my door in Cape Town. It was from the poet,
environmental activist, and longtime Buddhist Gary Snyder, a warm
response to questions about his writing. I was a graduate student at the
time and had been reading his work after a friend gave me a copy of his
1967 collection A Range of Poems. That first letter was the beginning of a long long-distance friendship and an ongoing conversation.

It started as an intellectual exchange and became an exploration of
practice. As a young person living in a society demarcated by the
paranoid logic of apartheid, I found it refreshing to meet the
spaciousness of Gary’s way of seeing. His delight in wildness. Poems
that opened up the idea of social justice to include nonhuman beings and
the living world. The truly radical realization that things are not
things but process, nodes in the jeweled net. And in all this a tendency
simply to walk out of the narrow prison of dualistic thought.

Over the years, what has kept on bringing me back to Gary’s writing
and to our conversation is his steady articulation of this vision in
practice: Buddhist practice, the practice of writing, of being a
householder, of living in places.

Nobody Home: Writing, Buddhism, and Living in Places puts
together three interviews and a selection of letters from around 30
years. We recorded the first interview, an adaptation from which
follows, in 1988 at Kitkitdizze, Gary’s home on the San Juan Ridge in
the Sierra Nevada, where he is also a member of the Ring of Bone Zendo.
It was a hot day in late August, and Carole Koda, his new partner, sat
listening throughout.

It would be really easy to live in
the city and teach at a Zen center and do nothing but Buddhist teaching.
I wouldn’t want to do it that way. I’d rather go out and start working
in the neighborhoods as much as I could, because I think you have to
work the ground for a Buddhist society first. You can’t just leave your
society the way it is and say 'We offer this as one of the teachings.'
You’ve got to help the society get its feet on the ground before those
teachings can begin to flourish.